


Laika

by multifannish



Category: The Young Ones (TV 1982)
Genre: First Time, It's more likely than you think!, M/M, Rick/Vyvyan - Freeform, Rivyan - Freeform, Time - Freeform, based on s2ep4, i don't even know why there was suddenly a spacetravel motif there, it just kinda showed up, space travel??? in MY fic?!, the young ones - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-15
Updated: 2018-12-15
Packaged: 2019-09-19 14:53:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17003772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/multifannish/pseuds/multifannish
Summary: Rick has been out of it of sorts ever since that incident with Vyvyan in the midst of the chaos brought on by the sudden appearance of Helen the Murderer. Well, and the fact that Neil had apparently teleported them into the middle ages. But what Rick really can't get out of his head are Vyvyan's eyes and the way he was looking at him when their chase, accompanied by yells of "VIRGIN!!!", found them in his bed.





	Laika

**Author's Note:**

  * For [palegingerade](https://archiveofourown.org/users/palegingerade/gifts).



Rick was confused – more so than usual. At this point more than a week had passed since they’d accidentally sheltered Helen the Murderer for a day and Neil had blown them into the middle ages somehow until they just gave up, fell asleep in what remained of the drawing room and found life returned to normal the next day. 

He was still thinking about it. God, would he ever be able to stop thinking about it? He never usually carried on thinking about anything for this long.

Rick stared at the discarded cardboard sign that Vyvyan had to have hung from the doorknobs on his wardrobe some days ago. It was the only thing that seemed to remain from that chaotic day, the only thing to prove that it hadn’t just been some weird convoluted dream of his. 

Well that and the howitzer that Vyvyan had blown to pieces and made Neil dig a pit for in the back yard so they could get it out of the way. Out of sight, out of mind, and out of the eyes of anyone who might see it and call the pigs on them. Fascists! 

But the sign, the sign remained.

VIRGIN

Rick felt himself shudder and goose bumps crept up his arms and down his back. Why hadn’t he tossed it out yet? It wasn’t as if there was no room for it in the bin, Neil had unceremoniously buried all their garbage together with the howitzer just to be rid of it. He’d had to dig a second hole for Buddy Holly. It had started getting smelly in the cellar cupboard, after all. 

VIRGIN

Once again his eyes darted from the window back to the sign on his wardrobe. He should toss it. Or burn it. He knew where Vyvyan kept the accelerant, after all. But he just couldn’t bring himself to even touch it – why would it still be there otherwise?

Rick refused to think about it any longer. He stared at the wall and not the sign that he could just make out from the corner of his eye, thank you very much. He was not thinking about it. Not about Helen who had snuck into his bed and not about the way she’d ruined his plan to make himself look more experienced than he was. Not about Vyvyan chasing after him, screaming and laughing, and especially not about the way he’d picked Rick up like he was a ragdoll, tossed him on the bed and jumped him. The way adrenaline had been coursing through his veins. How he couldn’t identify the reason why his heart was beating out of his chest anymore. Vyvyan’s hands on his chest as he tried to ease the force of his body slamming into Rick’s. Vyvyan’s eyes staring at him as they lay there, panting, sweaty and frozen in time.

They had stared at each other for a while. It might have been seconds or weeks. It felt like undiscovered galaxies unfolded between them. Fear was making a home in their eyes and blinded them from nothing but itself. Moving in slow motion, knowing what was coming and never stopping it to break the moment with the usual teasing and bickering, the beating and hissing. 

Rick had seen the bruise on Vyvyan’s upper arm where the sleeve of his shirt had folded up just a little. Blue fading into yellow. It had to have been an old bruise.

He’d lifted his arm up to place his hand on Vyvyan’s neck more gently than he ever had before. Stiffened ginger hair had brushed against his skin as he’d pulled Vyvyan down ever so slightly. Vyvyan’s fingers had dug into his shoulder painfully while he was still bracing himself on Rick’s chest with the other hand, the pressure making it hard to breathe.

It had been a matter of centimetres as they stared at each other like they couldn’t let their eyes separate for the life of them. He’d felt Vyvyan’s breath on his face and his grip on his shoulder, he’d have sworn he could hear his heart pound against his ribs as if they should break and then – 

Rick shook his head violently. Was he ever going to get over this and stop bloody thinking about it?! 

No, absolutely not, he admitted to himself with a disgruntled sigh and kicked his chair into his desk. He’d been walking up and down the room for what felt like hours.

Why had the floor given way under them just that moment? Just one second longer, just that tiny little bit longer and they would have – they could have – 

Rick refused to think it. He needed to ban the thought from his brain, shut it up in a box and toss the key somewhere he’d never get to it again. Like Pandora’s box, it was to be shut forever unless he wanted to suffer – literally suffer – the consequences. Vyvyan wasn’t known to be very patient or forgiving after all. Or considerate. If he ever mentioned that again, he would for sure lose Vyvyan’s good graces and have it used against him for the rest of his life.

 

Supper meant Neil was warming up an unidentifiable something made out of lentils over a bunch of candle stumps he’d found in a drawer somewhere because nobody wanted to bother cleaning the stovetop. It also meant sitting across from Vyvyan and praying to whoever might answer that he wouldn’t spill the beans about what their fight had been about to become when they’d crashed into the kitchen and instinctively covered up with more fighting.

But Vyvyan said nothing of the sort. Instead, when they were just about to be done with it and catch the last bit of whatever was on the telly before closedown, he began flicking bits of lentil mash into Rick’s general direction. 

“Vyvyan, you nazi! Stop ruining my coat, I’ve got an essay to hand in tomorrow!”

“To Dr. Morrison? I thought you wear your silly dungarees for that guy!”

“I don’t wear anything for him, Vyvyan, dungarees are very practical!”

“Unless you wanna go use the lavatory!”

“Well at least I’m not wearing flares!”

“Wow, heavy man, why you gotta drag me into this and hassle me?” Neil chimed in from the sink. “Uncool, man!”

“Oh shut up, you bloody hippy!” Vyvyan yelled over his shoulder and flicked another spoonful of lentils at Rick, whom they hit smack in the left eye. He yelped, jumped up from his chair and, as was to be expected, fell to the floor when his legs caught in the chair’s legs. 

Vyvyan grinned. “Training for ballet classes, are you, Rick?”

Rick didn’t reply and just wiped the goo from his face, got up and made to leave. Vyvyan bolted up to follow him. 

“Want me to help you get that out?” he asked, pointing at the various sickly green splotches he’d left on Rick’s person.

“No thank you, I’m sure I can do without further humiliation on your part,” Rick snapped. Vyvyan blocked his way up the stairs. “I’m not planning to humiliate you. Unless you ask for it!”

“You interpret everything I do as an invitation to disrespect my personal space and treat me awfully, don’t you?”

“For the most part.”

Rick pushed past him and stomped up the stairs. When he didn’t hear footsteps following him, he paused and looked back, irritated that Vyvyan would give up so easily. Vyvyan’s face looked... strange. Rick had never seen that particular expression on him before.

When their eyes met, he was reminded of that day a week ago. They were as wide as they had been then, with something in there that Rick couldn’t place. Somehow, he felt like a deer in headlights. Like a rabbit staring up at the wolf that loomed above it, waiting for the right moment to bite. Like a speck of dust in a cosmos.

He turned away and hurried up the stairs and out of sight. 

 

When Rick woke up the next morning, he found himself unable to open his door. When he finally managed to kick it out of its hinges, a deafening bang made him jump back as dust and splinters rained down on him.

“VYVYAN!”

“That’ll teach you to screw with other people’s stuff, you big bastard!” Vyvyan yelled from downstairs.

Rick kicked his way through his demolished door and raced down to stand, cross-armed and angry, between Vyvyan and a bowl of disgusting looking brown goop on the table. 

“Care to explain what you blew my door up for, fascist?!”

“Care to explain who dumped a bunch of blue food colouring into my hairgel?!”

Rick blinked. He’d done that weeks ago and forgotten about it, assuming Vyvyan just had another tube of it somewhere. “Well what makes you think I did, pray? Your hair’s not blue in the slightest!”

“Well of course not, I first used it on SPG this morning!”

Rick’s eyes darted to the hamster, who was sitting in between various plates and cutlery on the fridge, looking blue and miserable. Rick’s stance got a little more defensive.

“Well that still doesn’t prove it was me! Neil’s in the kitchen all the time, and why would I give him money and ask him to go out and buy food colouring specifically to play a dumb joke on you?!”

“Rick. You left a sticky note on it that said ‘That’ll teach you to beat people until they’re blue all over’ and signed it with your name!”

“Bastard!” Rick yelled and ran, Vyvyan following at his heels. For a while, they were busy with their wild chase through the entire house that especially the banister suffered under. Finally, panting and heated, they collapsed at opposing ends of the drawing room and just glared at each other. They were both absolutely unwilling to move any more than necessary at this point, so back to the roots it was – which in this case meant: back to “if looks could kill”.

“You’re a right bastard, Rick,” Vyvyan finally said with a grin. Then he threw his head back so that it slammed against the doorframe with a loud bang and laughed.

“Why thank you, you absolute bottom-burp!” Rick retorted immediately, however himself unable to hold back a grin of his own. “I only messed with your hair gel because you ate the banana I’d saved for myself when Neil said he was making those awful lentil hamburgers!”

“Oi, that wasn’t even me!” Vyvyan shot back, still laughing. “That was Mike!”

“Bastard! Anyway I know you did something to deserve it, so just forget about it!”

Vyvyan grinned as his laughter ceased slowly. “Yeah, probably. But whatever it was that I did, you totally had it coming!”

“Oh sure, blaming the victim. That’s very nice of you, isn’t it!” Rick sneered, a smile still pulling at his mouth. He liked their bickering, he had to admit – it was as if, over time, it had become less and less sincere and was more of a formality than anything else at this point. It was just how they communicated. For all that love, peace and Cliff were worth to him – he couldn’t imagine being civilised with Vyvyan all day every day. It just wasn’t how they worked. They had their calm moments, their moments of ganging up on Neil and working as a team as if they’d never done anything else, yes. But they were rare. If he thought about it, they had become rarer over time, as their bickering and shouting had turned into a familiar routine that they both understood to be much less aggressive than it had to seem.

“The only victim here is SPG,” Vyvyan said and brought Rick’s thoughts back to planet earth. The hamster had crawled over to the sink and started gnawing on one of the plastic cups that seemed like it was just about ready to come to life, mouldy as it was. Vyvyan jumped up.

“That’s my favourite cup, you bogey-faced gerbil!”

He grabbed the hamster and, after a moment of hesitation, turned on the tap and held him under the jet of water. Rick could only hear faint gurgling before Vyvyan was done and stuck him back into his cage without bothering to close the broken door. SPG was going to find his way out anyway.

“That’ll teach him! At least he’s mostly not blue anymore.”

Rick watched him stomp over to the cupboards and rummage about. He was still distracted by his thoughts. Vyvyan was aggressive, there was no question about that. And he did smack Rick around a lot, but even that had gotten less threatening. Rick had long lost any real fear of provoking Vyvyan or actively seeking out confrontation with him because he was sure that, despite everything, Vyvyan would never actually hurt him beyond giving him one too many bruises. To be fair, Rick wouldn’t mind not being unconscious half the day sometimes, but even when Vyvyan had been shooting at him with literal artillery – he had not been scared for his life. He didn’t like pain and Vyvyan knew that, but that’s also all Rick ever really had to be afraid of. He didn’t even worry that he might end up with broken bones – if anything, that was the ultimate MCA in their admittedly violent relationship. And even so. Bones healed.

“Hello, earth to Rick! Are you trying to astral project to Laika?!”

Rick snapped back to reality and found Vyvyan staring at him from the cupboards, holding an ancient pack of cookies and munching away. He sneered. “It’s called thinking, Vyvyan, you might not be familiar with it but I assure you it wouldn’t hurt you to try it some time.”

“Why don’t you show me then, if you’re so bloody good at it,” Vyvyan said and threw a cookie at Rick who was finally getting up from the far wall he’d been leaning against. He grabbed for the cookie but missed, sulking for a moment before he picked it off the floor. He heard Vyvyan laugh. 

“It’s not actually that difficult if you’ve got half a brain, you know!” he said and bit into the age-old pastry. It was rock-hard but still tasted like a cookie and not like a new form of life. Vyvyan stuffed the last cookie into his mouth, threw the package somewhere behind himself and grinned a maniacal grin. Rick couldn’t decide whether his cookie-filled hamster cheeks made him look more or less threatening.

“I give you three seconds to finish chewing!”

Rick coughed and spluttered and choked on the remains of his cookie. Vyvyan laughed around his own cookie but Rick, as he helplessly tried to stop breathing in crumbs, noticed how he immediately lost his fighting stance and instead came over to slap Rick on the back with force a couple times. 

Like in a terrible retelling of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, the cookie finally came flying out of Rick’s mouth and landed somewhere under the table for SPG to feast on or Neil and Mike to step into. 

“You okay?”

Rick nodded as he greedily sucked in breaths of crumb-free air. He realized Vyvyan’s hand was still on his back and the other was steadying him at the shoulder. He stilled, but the hands remained. 

When he straightened himself and looked up, he saw that look in Vyvyan’s eyes again. Wide, blue and unreadable. “I’m alright.”

Vyvyan kept looking at him. “Okay,” he finally replied belatedly, mouth curling into a smile. He had cookie crumbs stuck to his lip. Their faces were really close, Rick realized. Was Vyvyan making fun of him? Was he remembering that day and trying to coax a reaction out of Rick so he could call him a virgin again? So he could call him a poof again and threaten to tell Mike and Neil he loved men?

Not that Rick hated gay people, he was not a bloody fascist after all! But there was a huge difference between accepting gay people and… being a gay people. Right? There was a stigma, after all! He had to think about his future, too! What if someone found out whom he’d lived with, years down the road, and they found Vyvyan and he’d say “Yeah, I’ve always known he was a poofy little virgin! Be surprised if that changed at all”! He would be shunned, unable to find work and have to live in the streets, hopeless in the face of the Thatcherite dictatorship!

And still Vyvyan’s eyes had that something in them that he could not place, but it made him feel small in the face of something enormous. Had he gotten closer?! Rick jerked back and Vyvyan seemed to snap out of it and let go of him. Immediately, that grin was back. “I’ve long counted past three!” Vyvyan announced and laughed. 

“I never knew you could count past ten with your shoes on!” Rick yelled over his shoulder as he sprinted away, Vyvyan following at his heels. They almost trampled Mike as he emerged from his room to phone Mr. Balowski and talk him into another extension on their deadline for the rent. 

 

Days passed. Life came and went in waves of bollocks and it felt like it always had. 

Rick thought about it less, but every now and again, that day still flashed in his mind bright and overwhelming like a supernova. He’d taken the sign off of his wardrobe and stuffed it somewhere inside where it was hidden behind shirts and pants and trousers and a blue dress. But sometimes he still stared at the spot he’d taken it from, unable to tear his eyes away from it or stop his thoughts of Vyvyan’s eyes staring into his and the feeling of stiffened ginger hair on the back of his hand. His thoughts of the cosmos between them.

VIRGIN

Vyvyan hadn’t called him a virgin or a poof again since then, but sometimes Rick felt his eyes on him and had to think of that something he could not decipher that they held. 

It had been hot and humid for days but not a drop of rain had fallen to relieve them of the sensation that soon, they’d be able to cut the air with a knife. Vyvyan had begun to camp in front of the refrigerator when he couldn’t find anything to busy himself with, smoking a fag or three and complaining about being bored until he got up to smash something. And then the cycle repeated.

On this particular day however, Vyvyan had gathered a bunch of pottery and his cricket bat to smash into the tiniest possible bits as he sat in the door to the backyard, waiting for the grey clouds overhead to finally let it rain. 

Rick used the literal calm before the storm while it lasted and added a couple of paragraphs to his sociology essay that was due… actually, when was it due? 

He shoved some books off the table to reach for his ill-loved notebook and flipped through loose pages until he found the hastily scribbled list of deadlines. His essay was due a week ago. Somehow, Thatcher was probably responsible for this, Rick thought as he threw the notebook into a corner in frustration. Another awkward conversation he’d have to have with a professor who didn’t even know who he was, just so that he could beg to be given an extension on his deadline that he likely wouldn’t be getting anyway. Maybe he could say that he’d gotten it mixed up with another one… it wasn’t overdue that long after all!

Frustrated and angry at himself and thus projecting it onto everything around him, Rick got up and kicked his chair aside to stomp downstairs. He’d missed it now anyways, so what did it matter if he took one more day to deal with it?

He trotted downstairs, realizing once again how much stuffier the upper rooms of the house got when it was warm. A light breeze was blowing through the hallway and when he went into the drawing room, Rick could see why: in the open back door lay, abandoned, Vyvyan’s cricket bat and a bunch of smashed up flower pots. Vyvyan himself was busy in the garden, doing what looked like a very strange dancing ritual in the middle of pouring rain. 

A snore from the couch made him jump, but when he turned he just saw Neil asleep on it and, with a roll of his eye, focused his attention back on Vyvyan who was busy letting the rain soak him to the bone. 

A mocking laugh escaped Rick as he leaned against the doorframe to watch Vyvyan get drenched as he hopped around in excited, uncoordinated movements. Thunder roared above and Vyvyan screamed back at the sky in delight. Then he saw Rick, just as he was stumbling back into the house to avoid getting rained on when the wind started howling around the house and blowing droplets of water inside. 

“Hey, Rick!” Vyvyan yelled. He looked like a kid at Christmas and Rick couldn’t help but grin. 

“Hey, pissface!” he yelled back and Vyvyan’s grin widened even further. With a few long steps he’d run back to the house and pulled Rick out into the rain, as always ignoring his screaming protests. 

“Oh shut up you girl, it’s only water! God, aren’t you glad the air is finally clearing up? I swear I was breathing soup the last couple days!”

“It won’t last long; it’ll just be stuffy again once the rain stops!” Rick complained, but stopped trying to get out of Vyvyan’s grip. He was soaked either way. Vyvyan was still grinning and let him go only to push him right into the next bush, getting him covered in wet leaves, branches and dirt.

“What was that for you bumbag?!” Rick yelled as he scrambled back to his feet. Vyvyan just hopped around with that dumb grin on his face, yelling at the sky. Narrowing his eyes, Rick bent down, shoved his hand into the muddy ground and flung a glop of it right into the back of Vyvyan’s head. Vyvyan stopped dead in his tracks and Rick braced himself for a chase. But Vyvyan just turned around to face him. Mud dripped down his neck and his eyes sparkled. 

“So, you want to play, eh?!” he asked, feeling for the wet glop in the back of his neck. Rick grinned.

Without a warning, Vyvyan suddenly jerked his arm forward and the ball of mud smacked into Rick’s chest. Rick jumped. “That was fresh from the laundrette, fascist!”

“Well my hair was fresh out the shower!”

“You haven’t showered in a week you spazzo!”

“I’m showering right now!”

Rick ducked behind a bush when another mud ball flew past him and dug up a handful of dirt. If Vyvyan liked playing dirty so much, then this was the perfect opportunity to show him!

 

The rain lasted maybe for half an hour, but Rick and Vyvyan’s mud war lasted much longer. Finally, when the sun was just barely peeking through the blanket of clouds again, they were back to physically fighting each other. Dirty, covered in slowly drying mud and out of breath, they were rolling around kicking and tearing at each other once again. 

“Oh hey,” Vyvyan said and rolled off Rick, who coughed thoroughly after having been weighed down for a while; “the sun’s coming back out. Disgusting!”

Rick took a few deep breaths and turned his head towards Vyvyan who was now lying down next to him. His cheeks were flushed and his breathing was fast. He had an arm thrown across his eyes and a grin on his lips as usual. 

“Well, I sure hope it’ll take a while still. Otherwise it might stop your forehead from rusting and I would not want to miss that!”

“My forehead doesn’t really rust, you pinhead! I just said that to Neil because – ”

Vyvyan paused and turned to look at Rick’s smug grin. Then he whacked him in the chest by blindly flinging his arm across him. “Bloody hell Rick I really thought you were that dense.”

“Do I look like a hippy to you?!”

“No, but like a knob-end.”

“Takes one to know one, you human car crash!”

Vyvyan slowly took his arm back and laughed. Rick grinned. Vyvyan was a much bigger crash than just a car crash. He’d probably be a recipe for disaster like the first Soyuz – only complications, no fatalities until the very end when everything exploded. Rick frowned. Soyuz 1 hadn’t actually exploded per se. However considering that Vyvyan was, well, Vyvyan, a mere failing parachute leading to a speedy collision with the earth wouldn’t do. He’d make sure that something exploded on impact. It would be the kind of last thing that Vyvyan would do. 

He saw Vyvyan get up from the corner of his eye and trot back to the house. Rick yawned. It would be getting hot again soon enough, even though the sun was currently still hiding behind a layer of clouds and the light breeze made it really comfortable outside for the moment.

He’d only managed to prop himself up on his elbows when Vyvyan let himself fall back on the ground next to him with a fag in his mouth, offering one to Rick. 

“Oh, er, no, I – I don’t think I want one right now.”

“Just take it; I didn’t do anything to it! Here, I’ll switch it out for a different one, you girl!”

The one second too long that Rick took to decide on an answer made it click in Vyvyan’s head. He grinned. 

“Don’t know how to smoke properly, do you? I bloody knew you only puffed clouds.”

“Do not! I can smoke just fine, give me that!” Rick grumbled, knowing full well Vyvyan had seen right through him. He could smoke one or five at a time, but actually inhaling the smoke was beyond him. It sent sharp pains all the way down to his stomach and he’d find himself in a coughing fit every time he tried it. 

Sulking, he accepted the matches from Vyvyan and lit his fag, trying to ignore Vyvyan’s expectant grin. 

“Fine, you win alright! Leave me alone, fascist, you just want to make fun of me!”

“On the contrary, Rick! I especially want to make fun of you for not knowing how to smoke when you pretend to do it so frequently!”

“I do not pretend, okay?! I just don’t want my lungs to rot quite as rapidly as yours!” Rick snapped, taking a drag and demonstratively inhaling deeply, only to be retching and coughing his heart out for the following minutes. Vyvyan just chuckled and gave him a few claps to the back that were absolutely unhelpful. 

“Try breathing in through your nose,” he said when Rick had returned to the living. “It won’t burn as much but at least you won’t look like a complete dunderhead puffing useless clouds as soon as you take a drag. Trust me, try it. It’s how I learned.”

Rick just looked at him sceptically. Vyvyan stared back and Rick couldn’t help but swallow hard as those blue eyes bore into his once more. He looked away, ground his teeth and did what Vyvyan had said. Surprisingly, it worked pretty well.

“See? Easy as pie,” Vyvyan snorted and turned his attention back to his own fag. Rick just blinked before he managed to return to reality. Had Vyvyan ever actually given him advice that didn’t have a catch to it? He couldn’t remember. But even as he waited and then tried it again, nothing terrible happened – he didn’t burst into flames, his tongue didn’t suddenly fall off and neither did he turn into ash. Everything was fine. 

They both laid back down on the damp ground, watching clouds drift by and smoking in silence. Rick was absentmindedly picking at the grass. He felt strangely at peace. The thunderstorm had cleared the air for a bit, he was able to breathe easier than he had in days and the mud fight had taken care of his anger over the missed deadline. He snuck a look at Vyvyan only to find him watching him silently. A grin played on Vyvyan’s lips as it often did when he found something mildly amusing or annoying but didn’t bother to waste energy for more of a reaction.

Rick was about to ask what Vyvyan was on about when he noticed that at some point during his grass picking activities, he’d started playing with one of Vyvyan’s fingers instead. He jerked his hand back and felt his ears getting red. Vyvyan just chuckled a little and turned his head back to look up at the clouds again.

Rick sat back up and stared at the clearing sky as well. His thoughts were scattered around his brain but he was too worn out from their fight to try and sort them out. He decided that he needed a shower. When he’d finished smoking and Vyvyan unceremoniously lit himself his second fag, he got up and went to scrub the dirt off himself. Neil had woken up and complained that he was dragging mud in.

“Oh shut up, hippy! What am I supposed to do, wait for them to announce the next AM showers on the telly from out here?!” Rick sneered.

“No, Rick, man, but you could’ve like, told me man, I’d have gotten you a towel or something, man? I’m the one who’s got to clean this up, heavy…”

“Not as heavy as flares,” Rick grumbled to himself and trotted upstairs to allow himself the pleasure of a bathtub full of fresh bath water. Or, as he had to realize when he arrived at the bathroom door, full of Mike’s freshly discarded bath water. He banged on the door for ten minutes until he got bored with it. Fifteen more minutes passed and Mike finally emerged, squeaky clean and unbothered by Rick’s anger at having been kept waiting. Oh well. Finally, time to rid himself of the mud. By now it had started falling of in dry chunks.

He left the bath just in time to stop Vyvyan from kicking the door in because he’d gotten too impatient to wait his turn. He flicked something against Rick’s forehead and then promptly shut himself in the bath. Rick felt at his face, but after seeing a dry lentil roll away on the floor, he figured that Vyvyan had probably borrowed Neil’s go-to supplies for supper. Rick wasn’t even that hungry, he realized as he listened to the clatter of tableware float up from the downstairs region of the house. He turned towards his room. It was late enough to go to bed early.

 

Rick woke up when the door creaked open and he saw a silhouette enter quietly, a black shadow against the dimly lit hallway. He was about to scream when the silhouette shushed him and he just barely recognized Vyvyan’s voice. 

“Vyvyan, what the bloody hell are you doing here! I’m trying to sleep!” he sneered, sitting up and crossing his arms as Vyvyan shut the door, leaving them in darkness. Rick felt the mattress dip at his feet and then Vyvyan crawled up next to the wall. He could practically feel his grin. 

“I’m trying to sleep, too, so shut up and lie down!”

“You can go and sleep in your own bloody bed young man; I’ve got little enough space as it is!” Rick said indignantly, pushing and shoving at Vyvyan in an attempt to get him out of his bed, but all he managed was to make him chuckle.

“I poured vodka all over it. I can’t bloody well sleep in a wet bed!”

“Well go kick Neil out of his then, he doesn’t sleep anyway!”

“Neil’s bed is filthier than he is.”

“Oh, like you’re so sparkly clean all the time! Hah!”

“We both had a bath today, stupid!”

Rick felt an arm over his chest dragging him back on the mattress and pulling him close to Vyvyan until they were effectively spooning. Vyvyan’s hands were warm on his chest and Rick hated his heart for beating faster now of all times, now, that Vyvyan would be able to tell. He felt naked in his worn shirt and pants. Only now that they were pressed up against each other did he realize that Vyvyan wasn’t wearing any more clothing than he was. And he was surprisingly warm.

Rick stopped his weak struggling against the tight embrace and stilled in Vyvyan’s arms. He hated to admit it but it was a nice sensation, feeling Vyvyan’s body heat against his back as it seeped through their shirts. He waited for a kick, a pinch, a hit – pain of any sort, but there came none. Not even a biting remark. Instead, he heard Vyvyan shakily draw a breath, as if he was the nervous one here. 

“If you really want me to leave, I’ll go,” Vyvyan said behind him, his usually so loud voice an unfamiliar whisper in the darkness. “If you really don’t want this one bit, tell me to leave. I’ll leave.”

“I…” Rick tried to gulp down the lump in his throat, but to no avail. It had to be a trick, right? After all the fighting, the screaming, the kicking and yelling – how could Vyvyan suddenly want to be… calm. Quiet. Together? After all those looks that Rick couldn’t figure out…

“I don’t…”

He could hear his blood rushing in his veins, the sound drowning out everything else. Even Vyvyan’s breathing was no longer audible. Only the feeling of his chest pressing into his back again and again told Rick that he hadn’t just stopped doing it. All those stares out of those blue eyes.

“I can’t…” he tried again, but the right words wouldn’t come. He took a deep breath and squeezed his eyes shut against the darkness. Blue eyes filled with suns and stardust and the endlessness of an entire cosmos.

“I can’t,” he said simply, defeated at last, and with a heart beating like it wanted to burst, felt for Vyvyan’s hand on his chest. He heard Vyvyan breathe out behind him and the blood stopped rushing in his ears.

“Do you want me to stay?”

It was barely more than a whisper, but they were slotted together so closely, it was enough. Vyvyan’s eyes flashed through Rick’s mind again, wide and blue and desperate for something he couldn’t grasp. Something fell into place and suddenly he understood.

“Yes.”

Vyvyan’s arms tightened around him and Rick dug his fingers into the hands on his chest. Vyvyan was shaking behind him. Just as he wanted to turn around to work out what exactly was going on, he heard the quiet laughter. 

“Thank God,” Vyvyan managed and buried his head in Rick’s messy hair as he laughed so hard his breath caught. “Christ, Rick, I thought you were really going to kick me out.”

“I was,” Rick replied after Vyvyan had calmed himself. “I wasn’t going to play your stupid game just so you could call me a poof and mean it. I didn’t understand.”

“You thought that’s all it was? That I wanted to play jokes on you?!”

“It’s all you’ve ever done. I didn’t see why suddenly, you’d be serious about this, considering you beat me up all the bloody time.”

“I’m not very articulate outside of violence. It’s how I express just about any emotion.” 

“Well that’s just bloody rotten, it is!”

“I know of another way but you wouldn’t let me go there.”

“And what would that be?”

“Turn around and I’ll show you!”

It sounded like a threat but Rick knew all too well it was not. It was anything but and somehow, that was worse. At least he knew what Vyvyan’s aggressions meant. He knew how it worked, how fighting worked, how they worked. He knew how to deal with it. But this?

“I-I’m not sure that’ll be necessary,” he stammered, but Vyvyan just laughed.

“No Rick, you don’t get to have it both ways! You can’t hassle me for being violent all the time and then not let me prove to you that I’m not!”

Vyvyan wasted no time in pulling his arms back and grabbing Rick by the sides to flip him over so they were facing each other in the dark. He knew exactly what Vyvyan’s face looked like even though he couldn’t see him. The expression was so clear in his mind as if he was seeing it in broad daylight. He flinched when he felt a hand on his cheek.

“Let me show you.”

That was the other voice. The gentle voice that Vyvyan had so rarely used with him before… that day. He swallowed and nodded. Fear could not blind him if he gave up his eyes. He let them fall closed and waited.

Vyvyan pressed his lips into his. It felt like he was being frozen where he was and jerked back to life at the exact same time. Sparks raced through every nook and cranny of his body, ice and fire battled inside his chest for a moment and he reflexively clutched at Vyvyan’s shoulders. He felt something cold on his upper lip and realized that it had to be Vyvyan’s nose ring. Suddenly, everything fell into place and the chaos in his head died down instantly. 

This was right.

This was okay.

He hesitantly began to kiss back and felt Vyvyan relax against him. 

He felt like shooting stars were coursing through his very being and he suddenly knew that Vyvyan meant this like he meant every punch, every kick and every cuss word he’d thrown his way. Vyvyan meant this like he meant everything he did, with a sincerity that bordered on reckless abandon, no consideration for consequences and no care for an aftermath. 

Vyvyan just lived. Wide-eyed and hot-blooded; fearlessly embracing whatever he wanted to never let go again. And what he was embracing now was Rick, who snapped out of his stupor and grabbed at Vyvyan wherever he could reach, coiling his arm around his back to press them ever closer together and tangling his hand in the messy red hair where it had been that very first time. 

Vyvyan melted against him even more when he finally began to reciprocate and Rick just barely understood that Vyvyan had truly been nervous about this, even though he usually never seemed to be and just took what he wanted. But not this. 

Rick couldn’t help but pull Vyvyan ever so slightly closer and tried to pour it all into a kiss. Vyvyan paused. “What is it?” he whispered. His forehead pressed against Rick’s and the silver stars dug uncomfortably into his skin. He moved back a little and hesitantly cupped Vyvyan’s face with one hand, the other still playing with that stray strand of hair at his neck.

“Thank you,” Rick managed. He didn’t quite know how to put the words together. “I… I don’t know how to say this right. But ever since that Helen was here and we… you know, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It always came back. And sometimes when you looked at me I thought you were just waiting for the moment to use it to make a grand joke about me but I didn’t know because… it was like I thought there was a fire in your eyes but really it was a satellite, you know?”

It was silent for a moment. “No??” Vyvyan then said, sounding so thoroughly confused that Rick snorted with laughter, causing Vyvyan to join in almost immediately. For a good couple of moments they just lay there, shaking with laughter and holding on to one another all the while. Finally, Vyvyan managed to calm himself down enough to speak again.

“Could you maybe paraphrase whatever you just said? I didn’t really catch your meaning. At all.”

Rick chuckled. “I meant, I thought you were being aggressive as you always were. Fire is aggressive! But you weren’t, you were trying to send me a signal like a satellite to see if I thought the same thing you did but I didn’t get the signal until now.”

“Rick. That was such a convoluted metaphor that I’m suddenly willing to believe you’re actually a poet.”

“You philistine bastard!”

He was sure that Vyvyan had that grin on his face again.

“I didn’t like her much, you know? That Helen. She got to be in bed with you and you were boasting about it, too.”

“Never mind the part where she was an actual murderer,” Rick replied, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “You’re just angry she didn’t want to sleep in your filthy excuse for a bed.”

“No,” Vyvyan said, and his voice had that sincere sound again Rick wasn’t sure he’d ever get used to. “I was angry that you liked it. But I didn’t really get why exactly I was angry about it until we, you know.” 

Rick blinked in the darkness. “You were jealous?”

“I mean, I guess!” Vyvyan replied, obviously somewhat flustered at hearing it labelled as such. Rick grinned. “I’m gonna tell Mike and Neil that you love men!”

“Oh, go ahead, I’ll just point back at you, you girl!”

Rick felt his ears get hot, then he felt Vyvyan pull him forward and smash their mouths together. He pushed back reflexively and, to his surprise, was let go almost immediately. 

“Thank you,” he said, perplexed.

“What for?” Vyvyan asked, sounding similarly confused. Rick felt for his face and hesitantly stroked his thumb over Vyvyan’s cheek. “You don’t usually let me go when I ask you to. But you’ve always given me the choice to tell you no with this. I like that.”

“Well, it’s quite a bit different if I force you to snog me or if I’m whacking you around!”

“Not really.”

“It is because it’s you! You whine and moan all the time but if you didn’t want me to keep smacking you senseless, you wouldn’t provoke me on purpose, but you do. And I know I go overboard a lot with it, but I try to make a difference between your regular whining and your actual whining.”

Rick grinned to himself. Vyvyan had a point; he loved fighting with him even though he knew where it would inevitably lead. 

“I don’t whine and moan! I put forward perfectly reasonable complaints!”

He knew Vyvyan was grinning, too. “Well, if I haven’t made you moan yet…!”

He felt a hand squeeze his upper thigh and a jolt went through his body. “We might want to work on that.”

“We might,” Rick said, in a tone that was decidedly higher than his usual voice. Vyvyan’s hand went back to cradling his jaw. “If you want to.”

Rick gulped and curled an arm around Vyvyan’s shoulder. He closed his eyes again. Shut the fear out, keep the shooting stars inside. He felt his heart pound. 

“Yes,” he breathed, his voice quivering just the slightest bit, but he meant it. He did want it.

He pulled Vyvyan down into another kiss. No matter how far down this new road they’d go, he knew he wouldn’t have to take a single step he didn’t really want to take. No matter how much they fought – he trusted Vyvyan, truly, more than he trusted anyone else. Even in his violence, Vyvyan was upfront and honest at all times and he had promised to go only as fast as Rick would allow him to go.

As they kissed and touched and explored, Rick saw stars in his mind spreading out into a cosmos. Vyvyan – this whole thing to him was like the vast endlessness of space. He felt like he’d found an unchangeable truth in that as he allowed Vyvyan to pull his shirt over his head and felt him gingerly touch his chest moments later. 

There was always another star to be discovered and new galaxies to be found in the face of the black eternity that was their own shared cosmos. As much as it was scary it was beautiful, and as much as it was overwhelming it was full of wonder.

Their touches were growing frantic, their breathing faster and their bodies more heated. Rick felt his breath catch in his throat. They were no comet, but they were going much faster than he’d ever anticipated. He could hear Vyvyan’s voice next to his ear, quiet and breathless.

“Rick… I’m…”

“Yeah”, was all he could reply to reassure Vyvyan before all of the spacey thoughts he’d accumulated over the past days exploded before his eyes. He didn’t have it in him to keep his voice down anymore.

They fell silent after, just holding each other as if to reassure themselves they were both still there. Rick could see a faint outline of Vyvyan’s face emerge from the darkness as the earliest, barely visible beams of the sunrise began to light the sky outside of his window. He was tired and sticky and warm and more content than he’d been in a long time.

Maybe they weren’t going to be a Soyuz after all. Maybe their journey wouldn’t end in disaster. Maybe it wouldn’t ever truly end, just like Laika would forever roam the universe. 

Rick closed his eyes. He’d have time enough to think about space dogs in the morning. No doubt he and Vyvyan had some bollocks coming up that was much more urgent to be dealt with anyway. 

They were a recipe for disaster, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> I've had a rough draft of this around for a while because watching "Time" I've always considered it rather interesting how it's cut to show Vyvyan and Rick ending up in bed together, only to be literally crashing through the ceiling with said bed the next time we see them.
> 
> Thanks to palegingerade, who motivated me enough to dig this back up, finish it, polish it a bit and upload it. I hope you appreciate the little nod to your fic that I snuck in there :)


End file.
